Spanning the globe . . .

. . . to bring you the constant variety of FOSS. A few morsels of FOSS news have flown by the proverbial radar this week, and you may already know these things already. But just to recap

Finishing out the alphabet: Ubuntu announced it planned to offer a five-year long-term support — up from the usual three-year LTS — with its next release, 12.04 or Precise Pangolin. Bad news or good news? Good news on the whole, unless you have to use Unity — five years with Unity seems to strike me as an act that violates the Geneva Convention. But if you’re using one of the other ‘buntus, like Xubuntu, Kubuntu or Lubuntu, you’re in luck. You can keep using Pangolin and let Ubuntu ride out the alphabet, since Canonical’s SABDFL* Mark Shuttleworth will finally reach the end of the alphabet by Ubuntu 17.04 — 17.04 is the Z adjective/animal — five years after the release of Pangolin.

Hold onto those Palms: Well, if you thought Palm OS was out the window and that HP’s hardware was going the way of the Dodo and the Studebaker, think again. HP is actually going to keep its PC unit, according to ZDNet. Again good and bad news: Good news because I’m particularly fond of Palm OS and the Palm Pre 2 when I used it — and those who picked up the fire sale HP tablets have hardware that might get a new lease on life — but the bad news is that I now have to say something nice about Meg Whitman. Good call and thanks, Meg.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles . . . : The SCALE team is busy at work setting up 2012’s first event on the North American continent — SCALE 10X is being held Jan. 20-22 at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport — and their contest closes next week to design the SCALE 10X logo appearing on T-shirts, bags and other SCALE 10X swag. Details are here, and the prize is a trip to SCALE. Draw quickly.

Speaking of SCALE: Rikki Endsley wrote an exceptional piece on why kids matter in FOSS. She gives seven excellent reasons why we should be cultivating the future with a new generation of FOSS developers and advocates. Thanks, Rikki, for an exceptional dovetail into the SCALE Kids’ Conference, which will be held at SCALE 10X (dates and link above). Want to make a difference in FOSS future? Here’s your chance.

One more thing: I think I offer a pretty wide latitude when it comes to comments to this blog, if the FSF item is any indication. I do have a couple of rules that by which I ask folks to abide: a.) provide a name and an valid — valid — e-mail address (or a valid nameserver address), and b.) try not to be a douche. I know some people can’t help violating “b.” to save their lives, so I will sometimes waive that rule if they provide “a.” But if you violate both, you’re out of luck. That plain, that simple.

This blog, and all other blogs by Larry the Free Software Guy and Larry Cafiero, are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND license. In short, this license allows others to download this work and share it with others as long as they credit me as the author, but others can’t change it in any way or use it commercially.

(Larry Cafiero is one of the founders of the Lindependence Project and has just started developing software in his new home office. Watch this space.)

Larry,
The extended LTS Desktop support is specifically being provided by Canonical to go after Enterprise Desktop needs. Its far from clear that Enterprise Desktop customers are going to want Unity specifically. It will be _very_ interesting to see how enterprise customers react to Unity and more importantly what DE’s Canonical is offering paid support for through its Advantage branded support program. If _paying_ support customers choose Unity then it really doesn’t matter what old farts like you or I think about the interface. (And note I haven’t actually expressed an opinion as to the usability of any interface I’m just lumping myself in with you as an old fart for full disclosure)

The customer is always right and if Canonical actually has customers, they’ll make or break Unity as a deliverable.

Finishing out the alphabet: I like that idea. By the time I get my
system all set up they want me to upgrade to something new.
Let me achieve nirvana then just keep me safe, please.

Hold onto those Palms: The computer industry, Hard and Soft
will be shaking out for decades yet. Some of what goes will be
missed by the old timers. Ms. Whitman isn’t the CA Governator,
that is nice to say.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles . . . : / Speaking of SCALE:
SCALE is great, it is on the top of my Bucket List.
Taking care of the kids, the future, eh? Give your kids
Linux and an understanding of FOSS the future will be
great.

One more thing: There is always one more thing.
In this case, please just dump anything I post that
smells bad. Sometimes the rank just takes over.